Alternate Chronicles of Meap
by LadySilver
Summary: One of Dr. D's -inators works, and Meap is caught in the middle. AU.


_A/N: Another AU Bingo entry. This should be the last one. Thank you for reading and reviewing._

**The Alternate Chronicles of Meap**

by LadySilver

As an intergalactic security agent, Meap had found himself in a lot of untenable situations, ones that demanded all his strength, intelligence, and years of training and experience. He had apprehended villains many times his size and strength, escaped from planets with volatile and toxic atmospheres, and encountered depravities beyond the realm of imagination. When his spaceship's engine mysteriously cut out just after it entered Earth's stratosphere, he expected a quick and ignominious end to his life. How unimpressive it was to die in a simple crash and with his bounty uncaught. He did not expect for the ship to slow its descent despite the safety systems being equally disabled, nor for his ship to come to a shuddering halt before it hit the ground.

Meap stepped carefully from the wreckage of his spaceship, surprised to find himself crash landed in a building. More precisely, it looked like he had crashed on the open balcony of a building, though there was surprisingly little structural damage that he could see. A ship traveling at the speeds his had been, even accounting for how much it had slowed, should have destroyed the building. Acrid white smoke billowed off the surface of the craft, its skin badly burned through the friction of reentry without the proper shields up. He turned away from his ship, assessing his surroundings for immediate threat. A dozen different action plans started to take shape in his head with each new detail that came to light.

A male human was standing off to the side of the balcony, his lips spread wide in a grin. He was wearing a white coat over wrinkled trousers and a shirt, and had a hunched posture that Meap was certain was not normal to human physiology. "You are no doubt wondering why I invented this spaceship-summon-inator," the human proclaimed, with a proud wave of his hand toward a grotesque pile of electronics that reminded Meap of every child's first attempt to build a ray gun. Somehow that device had to be responsible for Meap's relatively unimpressive crash. A machine that could mitigate crash landings had incredible value in the interstellar corps. Suddenly his action plans fell by the wayside; he had to find out more. If he could bring his bounty back _and_ bring knowledge of this amazing invention, the security agency would more than forgive the destruction of his ship.

"Meap?" he asked. He cringed inwardly. His translator unit had broken. While he could understand the human, he would not be able to make himself understood, and that was going to cause no end of problems. Meap had always loathed missions that took him to Earth, not the least of which was because of how alien their sense of aesthetics was. By the standards of his race, Meap was the physical embodiment of tough and powerful, a force to be feared. It was why he had done so well for himself as an intergalactic security agent.

By the standards of Earth humans, he was …. he cringed again, this time less successful in hiding it … _cute_. He thought the word with all the derision he could muster. He had studied enough of Earth culture to know that his size and bodily proportions made him read as infantile and harmless, the opposite of the qualities a bounty hunter needed to have. "Meap," he repeated, standing his straightest, hoping that the human would understand.

The human turned his gaze on Meap, his eyes glinting with the light of an obsessive who has finally found someone to share his obsession with. "That requires some backstory. You see," he began, "when I was a lad back in the old country, my mother and my father wouldn't allow me to leave the house after sundown. They told me monsters lived in the forest." He curled his fingers into the mimicry of claws and scratched at the air in front of him, his lip pulling back into a snarl while his gaze turned inward as he relived the memory he was narrating.

Meap sighed to himself. He had a choice: Stay through however long this monologue took and hope that its narrator would eventually get to the real information, or leave. With each tick of the cooling metal alloy, his bounty was getting farther away. The tracker in his head indicated that, right now, his bounty was no more than a few _mpaup_'s away. Meap could probably apprehend him and return before the human even realized that he'd lost his audience. Unfortunately, no matter how the story ended, he needed the human. Meap wasn't going to be able to return his bounty to the prison without a functioning spaceship. While the human's technological skills were subpar—Meap squinted in suspicion at the so-called Spaceship-summon-inator—they would have to do.

"Annnywayyyy," the human continued, stretching out the word at his apparent recognition and disapproval of how little attention Meap was paying to the story, "One night I snuck out of the house. I had heard how the sky at night was filled with these lights called _stars_." He spoke the last with a reverence that only those members of a plant-bound race could summon without sarcasm. "While I was sitting in the grass, gazing up at these _stars_, I saw a different object in the sky, just floating there. I knew at that moment that it was an ufo."

The human turned his long, pointed chin and nose toward the sky, as if hoping to catch the object he spoke of lurking there. The sky was a pale blue today with long streaks of white clouds smeared across it. Meap had always found that color disconcerting; skies were meant to have a more reddish hue. "I tried to tell people, but they all laughed at me and called me a fool." The human lowered his voice which was now dripping with bitterness and focused his attention back on Meap. "I've spent the rest of my live trying to find it and prove the truth of what I saw."

"Meap," Meap offered, trying to interrupt before this could turn ugly. He really didn't have the time to be spending on this revenge fantasy. There was a law-breaker out there who needed to be recovered and returned to incarceration before he could harm anyone else. He could work on the convincing later after he recovered a translator. His bounty would have to have one. Meap turned to jump off the edge of the building, knowing that he'd be able to run down the side of the building in this planet's reduced gravity and get to the ground quicker than any other method of egress.

"Wait! Don't go!" the human cried. "I haven't had a chance to explain how my –inator works."

"Meap!" Meap responded, waving a hand to cut off the human before he could launch into another monologue. "Meap."

The human narrowed his eyes in displeasure, then reached into a pocket on his coat and retrieved a smaller hunk of electronics. He pressed the prominent red button on it, and a jolt of electricity seized Meap's body and froze his limbs. "Now you will not be going anywhere, you adorable alien."

Meap opened his mouth, the only part of his body over which he still had any control. Using his rainbow disintegrator was a last resort, especially in a confined space. The device the human clutched in his gnarled fingers was small, but if Meap could just … twist … his … head …

The human went flying forward, the device skittering across the balcony's surface, out of Meap's line of sight. An aqua animal, the likes of which Meap had never seen before, landed in a fighting stance on the cement a short distance from the human. From the hat on its head, Meap deduced that the animal was a secret agent. Had the security agency received his distress signal and sent some emergency backup? How had the animal gotten here so quickly? "Perry the Platypus," the human wailed. "What took you so long? You missed my entire backstory!"

The agent spun around, delivering a kick to the human's head that sent him sprawling and left him sputtering. Then he dove for the device and crushed it with a powerful slap of his tail. The electricity binding Meap ceased. Meap collapsed into a trembling pile. Not only had the electricity disabled him, but he was deflated under the lost hope of the secret agent's purpose. The agent was an Earthling, and that meant no spaceship. It took him a long moment to get his facilities back, a moment that could have cost him his life in different circumstances. He was going to have to reconsider his training methods. The second he could, he pulled himself to his feet.

The agent stood, paws up and ready to attack, positioned half way between the human and Meap. His eyes flicked back and forth between them.

Meap slowly reached into his fur suit and pulled out his agency identification. He flashed it at the agent, whose eyes widened in immediate recognition. Now, that was an unusual response from Earthlings.

The agent motioned in a silent question to the still smoking surface of Meap's spaceship.

"Meap," Meap explained. He replaced his ID, brushed some dirt off his fur, and turned toward the edge of the balcony. His bounty was getting farther away and needed to be apprehended before he finished committing his dastardly deeds. Mitch was no typical monster.

The agent touched the brim of his hat, wishing Meap well, and dismissed him. Meap hesitated before he slipped over the side. He saw the agent turn back to the human and make a gesture.

"You can't make me, Perry the Platypus," the human mumbled.

The agent raised its paws higher and took a threatening step forward.

"Fine, fine," the human acquiesced. "Though I fail to see how this will help me take over the Tri-State Area."

With that, Meap left, confident that when he returned—with his prey captured and his mission accomplished—the spaceship would be repaired. He thought back to the junk pile of the Spaceship-summon-inator, and grimaced. As long as it worked, he wouldn't complain about too much about how it looked. He'd survived worse situations. He could deal with this one, too.

END

_A/N: Fulfills my AU Bingo square #8: Alien_


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